Oscars 2013

On this, the 10th 20th anniversary of the correct movie winning best picture, we celebrate by having that smarmy millionaire dick from the Comedy Central Roasts and the Fox cartoons sing fake-edgy show tunes and make Hitler jokes, but hopefully it’ll still be fun. I’m kinda bummed that ARGO seems to be headed for best picture, but way worse movies have won before. I’ll be rooting for LINCOLN as the one that has a chance to win (ZERO DARK THIRTY is too misunderstood and DJANGO UNCHAINED is too awesome). Remember, if LINCOLN or DJANGO does not win it proves that Hollywood is pro-slavery.

I’ll be rooting for Honest Abe, who I think is a shoo-in, but I can be bad as these things. I’ll be rooting for Catwoman, even though I got a thing for Li’l Mystique and she might take it. I’d like PARANORMAN to pull off an upset, but I doubt it, so I’ll take WRECK-IT RALPH.

I’ll be kinda mad if LINCOLN doesn’t get best adapted, for many reasons, some mentioned in the link below. I’ll be rooting for ZERO DARK THIRTY in original, but would also be thrilled if Tarantino or Anderson somehow got it. And if they cut to Bruce in the audience.

I do not recommend drinking games but if you do them I suggest drinking for McFarlane making a Hitler reference, for cutting to Chris Tucker after another black person speaks on stage, for jokes about ZERO DARK THIRTY and torture, and references to the N-word being used alot in DJANGO UNCHAINED. Or Jamie Foxx’s balls being shown.

Anyway everybody have fun and please share your thoughts below. This is recommended for participants only and not “I don’t watch the Oscars because such-and-such” sticks-in-the-mud.

UPDATE: How I did on my predictions (SPOILER: poorly)

Over on this Fanhattan thing me and some other writers wrote about who we thought would win in some of the categories and why. I would’ve changed some of my predictions if I’d written them more recently, but wouldn’t have done that much better (except I would’ve caught up with everybody and called ARGO for best picture. Back then it seemed like a ridiculous notion to me).

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It’d be so easy for me to be a stick in the mud for different reasons. This morning I saw George Will endorse 0DARK30 while many other dweebs (and one Amanpour) populating the Sunday morning talk show roundtables agreed with him & praised it. George fucking Will.

President Jimmy Carter said he liked ARGO except that he couldn’t get past the fact that 98% of the credit for the op should go to the Canadians. (The other bs suspense elements are well-documented.)

And Tony Kushner (LINCOLN) inexplicably flipped the Connecticut representatives’ votes for the 13th Amendment from “Aye” to “Nay.” Spielberg doesn’t seem to care. How does that family feel now that their greatgreatgreatgrandfathers’ votes to end slavery have been made through the “magic” of Hollywood into votes to fucking *uphold* slavery in this remarkably well-regarded prestige film that Spielberg wants to distribute to classrooms?

I have trouble not finding this negligence — no, much worse, this willfully wrong manipulation of certain lawmakers’ legacy (or SEALs’ legacy, or the CIA’s legacy, or Canadian intel leaders’ legacy, or…) for the purpose of cinematic dramatization — to be disgraceful. Oh well. Others don’t have this problem. C’est la vie.

But they’re well-made movies, technically. You know, other than the writing integrity or their value as documents of the history they claim to depict. They have competent camerawork & editing & good acting and all the dialogue is hear-able, so that’s something. Good enough to win some trophies, apparently.

I also hate LIFE OF PI and really hate BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.

I guess SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is good. Ish.

I wish Brit T. Hooper’s LES MISERABLES were better & better received so that more awesome, grandiose, ambitious musicals would come to theatres.

/end grumpiness

DJANGO UNCHAINED is probably my 2nd or 3rd least favorite Tarantino joint (ahead of KILL BILL: VOLUME 2), but it’s still the best of this 2012 Oscinee bunch. Leo Dicaprio’s teeth are in my nightmares.

So I guess I’ll be watching for the MacFarlane wit and for the hope that something weird/funny happens between montages & interminable thank you speeches. It helps that I’m able to watch NBA games on an adjacent tv simultaneously.

Yayan Ruhian and Philip Seymour Hoffman are my only Supporting Actor nominees. (assuming Robert Downey’s Tony Stark is a leading role, barely, I guess)

But I’m very pleased that Christoph Waltz has another trophy. This is good for Tarantino, cuz he’s getting good pub here but you know he’s not gonna make too much of it and go soft or prestige-y just to chase awards, no matter how many times he’s acknowledged by The Man like this. These Oscar voters have some balls, after all. Good choice.

I thought PAPERMAN was good but the environmentalist in me can’t abide all that waste of paper and the efficiency nut in me can’t abide an employee wasting company resources like that guy does and the competitor in me can’t help but want to ridicule that guy for missing his target so many times and being such a bitch around the cute girl.

So far we’ve heard an orchestra play the theme from DJANGO starring Franco Nero, seen Chris Tucker appear in an Oscar clip and learned that the director of HOOPER and CANNONBALL RUN got an Oscar this year.

I was just about to post that. We’ve seen Chris Tucker, Hal Needham, a clip from DIRTY HARRY (deceased cinematographer), and a clip of THE FAST & THE FURIOUS (f/x honoree montage). The Oscar producers are playing to the Outlaw crowd a little bit.

God, I remember when the Oscars were so epic and enlightening to me as a kid. Now they’re epically lame in comparison. I mean, beyond the whole “my movie didn’t win” crap. I miss being mesmerized by clips and learning from them. Only a few speeches from certain winners a year can begin to catch that feeling for me.

First Lady mentions that the Best Pics “took us into the past and around the world,” which is accurate. Sci-fi & futuristic type films don’t get a lot of noms or wins, but the voters love the “histori-fi” genre.

Make shit up + laser beams = no recognition

Make shit up + period facial hair & costumes = trophies flying at you

Ben Affleck hopefully won’t fulfill Seth MacFarlane’s joke and become Benjamin Affleck. He should keep doing what he’s doing, quality mysteries & thrillers, and I’ll keep paying to see his movies. Also if he directs an EXPENDABLES installment, I’ll see that, too.

I actually walked out on Argo when I saw it in the theatre (I think there was maybe 20 minutes remaining). Mediocre performances, tonally uneven, zero tension where there should’ve been plenty, and generally unengaging. I call bullshit on this winning Best Picture.

2,000 twittererites and 1,000 facebookerites. Look at all these goddamn milestones Vern is surpassing on the big awards night.

Don’t act like you don’t track that shit. Congratulations.
In the spirit of the Oscars, you now have 19 seconds to thank 300 people, breathlessly suggest that your work is somehow contributing to the worldwide solution to children’s hunger, and get trumpeted sideways off the mic, readysetgo.

-the FPS alien invasion game hosts one of the best action sequences of the last several years,

-Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) is a realistically hardcore NCO, a badass warrior, a character with a brilliantly funny & brilliantly brief tragic backstory, and is somehow sexy as hell for a cartoon voiced by a lesbian (a mannish one, frankly)

-Felix’s character evolution is amazing: starts as an antagonist with surface good guy qualities that probably mask his assholism, turns into a genuine protagonist, then paradoxically threatens to ruin everything for the titleistical protagonist, then becomes a nerdy guy with a stupid crush, then a still pathetic but possibly legitimate love interest, then a hero, then the guy who gets the girl, but all the while he still somehow remains 2nd fiddle to the main story of Ralph & Vanellope

-The other characters also all undergo twisty, complex evolutions that made sense & impressed me —
Vanellope is a menace, the bad guy, but then she gets sympathy for suffering with the glitch and not being able to hang out with the other girl racers, but she keeps stealing shit & ridiculing Ralph so she’s not sympathetic, but then she becomes the most important part of the arcade’s universe, then at the same time that you learn that she could destroy everything she also becomes just the cutest most adorable tiny figure with the cutest most modest little dreams of being accepted & racing in cute little cars & twirling & smiling unaware that she’s a glitching ticking nuclear bomb cluster, then she becomes a defiant asshole, then she’s a crying baby, then she does a training montage to hone her badass skills, then she’s a savior and a cutey again, although she requires help from the other conflicted characters to fulfill her role

-Ralph’s evolution is self-evident: bad guy in the video game, a destroyer, then a gentle giant, then he loses control, then he fucks up “HERO’S DUTY” for half-selfish but understandable reasons, then he almost destroys the world but luckily ends up uncovering the truth and saving everything due to heroism, brute force, teamwork, etc..

-King Candy’s character goes all over the place through a series of celebrations, strategic shows of force, lies, withheld info, speaking out both sides of his mouth, etc.. You start to gauge other characters by how you perceive whether King Candy likes them or not, approves of them or not, but then you are forced to judge other characters in a totally different way once you learn more about King Candy. I thought this was shockingly complex & rewarding.

-I won’t mention much on the SPOILERS that so surprised me. Did not see that identity twist coming. Well done.

-And yes, video game & arcade nostalgia does help me enjoy WRECK-IT RALPH more than most cartoons. I won’t deny this. The p-o-v shots from inside the games, seeing the “out of order” signs in reverse — that’s great filmatism, almost TOY STORY-level art.

I loved ARGO, too, but, man, it’s hard to reconcile how you call it “Best” something when it contains sections of blatant, unmasked fiction and then proceeds to juxtapose actual historical photos with images of the 2012 actors portraying them. It doesn’t bother me, really — I still enjoy the film, a lot — but it’s enough to make me never consider voting it “Best” something.

Like, Vern might publish the most exciting, revelatory review of DIE HARD ON A RUSSIA ever, but if in that review he flubs basic historical data and embellishes & adds nonsense — he repeatedly refers to “Joseph McClane,” says DIE HARD 5 is the 2nd sequel in the series, which he claims was directed by Robert Rodriguez in Mexico, and inserts a suspenseful aside about John Goodman answering telephones — then I’m gonna have some problems recommending that article to people as the “Best”.

But we understand these are fictional versions of events. We’re not stupid. My problem with ARGO is not a matter of untruthfulness, it’s that the untruthfulness I think takes away from the main attraction of the movie, which is a “hey, truth is stranger than fiction” type of story. But also I think its lack of bestness comes from starting out with an interesting idea and then not really doing much with it for the middle section until it decides “eh, fuck it” and turns it into a fictional suspense thriller. I could’ve skipped the middle 45 minutes on that one, but the longer LINCOLN and especially ZD30 were completely gripping from beginning to end for me. They’re just so much more involving and moving and thought provoking and filmatistically more accomplished.

That said, I didn’t know that thing you said about the Connecticut vote in LINCOLN. That’s a shitty thing to fuck up. That would be worth special editioning. Or walkie-talkie-ing I guess we should call it.

Also I want to say that Ben Affleck seems like a cool guy and good for him thanking Canada and Iranians. Let’s hope this doesn’t go to his head and he makes some more badass movies like THE TOWN. Also, I liked ARGO better than CRASH.

Sounds like, through the crucible of Oscar night, we have learned the important lesson of LINCOLN, the lesson of force of argument, force of will, & compromise for the greater good. You make good points, I make some good points, we agree on a bit of each issue where earlier we were at odds, and now thanks to our efforts black people are free, Iran gives up their nuclear weaponry ambitions, and Jennifer Lawrence shows up at Griff’s doorstep looking for a place to spend the night. Win win.

In a more perfect union, I’d be able to use Vern’s words — “[Those movies] are just so much more involving and moving and thought provoking and filmatistically more accomplished.” — to convince more people that THE AVENGERS was the best, most awards-worthy, most “involving & moving,” most “filmatistically accomplished” film of 2012.

Oscar voters & “serious” film critics are racist against superhero movies (and not for no reason if I’m being honest, looking at the Marvel/DC films track record), but I really think if I ice skate uphill hard enough on this then a strong case can be made that AVENGERS was the best-written movie, the most well-executed movie, the best-edited movie, the best f/x movie, the best cinematographized movie, okay maybe sound editing/mixing can go to another film whatever, and I really think people are sleeping on RDJ. People gush about Ruffalo, how he got Banner/Hulk “just right, FINALLY!”, and I didn’t even think he was that great, just adequate. ScarJo was also fucking phenomenal; I was not expecting that at all. I was resistant to it, in fact, and she won me over. Just look at her subtle facial contortions while she’s tied to that chair in the beginning, then the exertion & athleticism & battle-focus as the Manhattan climax wears on. She’s doing work.

RDJ’s 3-movie performance as Iron Man is taken for granted. And yes I’m aware that the reason it is taken for granted and not taken seriously can be found in that very cluster of words — Robert Downey as Iron Man. It’s a cartoon character. It’s fuckin’ stupid on its face; it’s silliness. I get it, you have to be a stroke patient suffering through old age, you have to be a mentally challenged person who falls in love, you have to be an Englishman portraying America’s greatest president, you have to cry & sing something that old people like to pay $300 a ticket to hear on Broadway, you have to play British Queens or American First Ladies, you have to be a drunk/druggie. All that stuff is totally normal. Those movie roles are so relatable, obviously, but you’re crossing an uncrossable line if you portray a superhero or a supersmart guy who wears a supersuit, anyway. That’s just not fathomable compared to those other paragons of relatability & prestige.

And once you have a superhero team in your movie, well, that means your movie is invalid for consideration in any awards field but f/x. Doesn’t matter that the movie’s editing actually contributes, is essential, even, to the character relationships, the momentum of the plot, the visual rhythm, the outstanding scriptorial architecture, the artistic gestalt of the piece, and the je ne sais quoi factor of narrative-color-emotion-theme oneness that gives the audience a hard-to-place-but-undeniable buzz, whereas in other movies the editing merely establishes flow & mood and shows where the filmmakers made technical choices on where/who/what to snip to get to the next set piece.

Start-to-finish enjoyment factor works against you, and public approval in the form of $1 billion gross probably works against you too.

And god help you if your most powerful scene involves Hulk Smash and not a Serious character articulating a Serious event in Serious history for Serious people to watch and tug their beards along with. Best Picture winners aren’t allowed to have fun in their best filmatized moments. Serious Drama is always better & more important than action or fun.

But I don’t hold those factors against THE AVENGERS, and that’s why I see clearly that it’s by far, by any & all measures, the best theatrically released film of 2012.

Though a tweep reminded me they left off Whitney Houston too. That’s a pretty big deal. It’s also basically the exact anniversary of her death.

I don’t think editing awards actually take length of film into account. I think it’s more about the editing of scenes within the film. I base this only on years of complaints about long movies winning for editing.

I didn’t like BRAVE but thought it was cool that Brenda Chapman got an Oscar after having the movie taken away from her.

yeah, I was shocked Brave won too, that reeked of a lazy “eh, just give it to Pixar again” attitude about the whole category, I mean really, Pixar? AGAIN? for Brave?

while granted I didn’t see Brave, it just didn’t look at all interesting to me, I’m actually getting worried about Pixar, after the height of Toy Story 3 they seem to be in a slump, I’ll be giving Monsters University a chance though, here’s hoping that turns out to be good

and man, I really wish they would at least nominate an anime again, when was the last time they even nominated one? Ponyo?

I’ve always had an issue with the whole In Memoriam part of the Academy Awards ceremony. First of all, I’ve got no reverence for the dead. I view death pragmatically rather that emotionally— it’s gonna happen to all of us sooner or later; just deal with it. Second, as far as people included in the In Memoriam tribute who weren’t previous Oscar winners… why put them out on parade after they’re gone? Fuckall good it’s gonna do them now. Third, it brings the show to a crashing halt and (however briefly) bums everyone out.

Here’s my idea to liven up this otherwise sombre moment: have actors made up to approximate the facial likeness of each dead film industry person being honored… but as zombies, dressed in tuxedos and fancy dresses, and strewn with the usual zombie gore. They would zombie walk across the stage as their names were announced, then lurch offstage and into the audience, where they would gnaw on random attendees (that’ll teach you not to sit in the front row, Jack). Whattaya think— yay or nay?

I would love to see an IN MEMORIAN zombie walk, but for now I’m glad that they both turned down the audience microphones* and stopped intercutting the segment with some on stage performances!

BTW, am I the only one who hated that during that crafty categories (VFX, Make up, costumes) they just showed some lame title cards, with faces of the movie’s stars, isntead of real examples? Show me the costumes! Show me before/after footage! I wanna see WHY it was nominated!

*I always found it disrespectful when the audiences cheered for a famous face, but remained silent for a behind-the-camera guy or a less famous actor.

Fred: Are you sure they didn’t do Whitney Houston last year? I think I remember it.

I think the editing category SHOULD have to do with editing of the scenes and coherent juggling of complex storylines as you say, but then ZERO DARK THIRTY would’ve won. It has been explained to me that the winner in the editing category always wins best picture, so I think it’s actually that most voters can’t comprehend what good editing would be so they just pick whichever movie is their favorite.

anyway I’m the opposite of a long hair guy, when I get a haircut, I always cut it really, really short, almost bald, there’s three reasons why

1. I think short hair looks good on me, I think long hair would just look weird on me
2. short hair is more comfortable and easier to manage
3. my hair gets unbelievably greasy unbelievably fast, I shudder to think what a mess long hair on me would become after just one day

Griff – that might have been in the Survival Guide,I don´t remember but i just remembered it recently from the Walking Dead videogame where Clementine gets an ugly as fuck haircut, but at least it´s more practical.Fashion does not matter during an zombie apocalypse. Why? Because everyone is too fucking dead to care,that´s why!

Anne Hathaway has real star power. Tarentino is a piece of shit. The Lincoln movie was an Obama ass-kissing stunt. I felt that in my gut when it came out, but seeing the jackass screenwriter interviewed on Charlie Rose confirmed it. Michelle was disgusting as usual; why was she featured, anyway? I have yet to see Zero Dark Thirty, but i’m sure it’s gonna be pretty good. The host was so random and forgettable that i don’t even remember who he was or why he is on TV. Well, we drank beers and made fun of the mega-ego catharsis. The oscars are always fun for a nasty-ass bull session.

Shoot: I liked that SKYFALL song just fine and I’m not upset it won, but I’m not sure what’s so special about it. I heard that Adele was doing the theme song and when I listened to it I thought “Yep, that’s definitely a Bond theme by Adele”.

It’s too bad the Oscar clips for Best Actress for Chastain and Lawrence made their performances look alot more gimmicky and Oscar-baity than they were. (As Fred pointed out, Lawrence’s cafe scene borders on Cage-style MEGA, while the rest of her performance is relatively restrained and subtle).

I actually think Lawrence was pretty amazing in The Hunger Games, so even though she didn’t really deserve to win for SLP, I’m glad she won. (The real Best Actress performance for me this year was Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect, but we’ll keep that between us). I like that the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress all came from different films, spreading the love around.

But yeah, I didn’t get the half-assed Bond tribute. They should have gone all the way and had Carly Simon sing “Nobody Does it Better” from The Spy Who Loved Me as part of the Mavin Hamlisch in memoriam (instead of Barbara, even though that was nice) and hell, have Mark Wahlberg reprise “All Time High” from Octopussy/Ted while they were at it.

Yes, President Obama admires President Lincoln (Really, who the fuck doesn’t? Besides neo-nazis and Westboro weirdos?), the film that Spielberg was planning on doing at least since his Schindler’s List days with Liam Neeson originally in mind for Lincoln, is merely a stunt.

TOP GEAR did a better Bond tribute. It might have aired on BBC America already, but I recommend it for anyone disappointed in Sunday’s rather lackluster tribute (sans Bassey singing the hell out of “Goldfinger” at 76).

Vern – “Argo” was better than “The Town” for me. And “The Town” was really, really good. But while we may flip “ZD30″ and “Argo” in terms of “Which is the really effective movie”, I can defintely get behind the sentiment of “let’s have Affleck make more badass movies.”

pegsman: Yeah, and it dissects some of the more memorable car stunts too. It has interviews with Craig and Roger Moore, and some of the directors of the 60’s-70’s movies. Also features a real-life version of the Lotus car-submarine hybrid.

I’ve seen it on Norwegian TV. Thankfully it was just Hammond so I quite enjoyed it. Don’t really know why they skipped Lazenby completely. He was the first Bond to drive a new Aston. But they do some strange things on that show, so I shouldn’t let it bother me, right?

Lazenby was in the montage. Pretty near the beginning there was a wide shot, in a room, of him wearing a frilly shirt. It may have been brief, and that was his only appearance I spotted, but he was there.

While I can perceive those elements in the film, none of them came to the sort of fruition in my eyes that they did in yours.

I didn’t see Frankenweenie or the Pirates one, but the theme in the other three Best Animated films for me was some nice stuff at the conceptual level, but underwhelming in culmination. They each create vivid, richly woven fantasy worlds and then don’t follow through with a story or character development commensurate with the obvious talent at work. Bland Moral Lessons like…. well they all have the same one I suppose, “it’s okay to be different.”

But while PARANORMAN and BRAVE were merely trifling, I genuinely hated WRECK IT RALPH and found it to be a terrifyingly soulless affair. Hard to describe my beef with it exactly. It looks like something that was made by some sort of giant animation machine/factory (loaded words to describe a Disney film, I know) where there’s a frenzy of little touches of personality imbued into the character’s faces and movements, but no commanding vision at work steering all of this together into something cohesive and artful. It looks like it was made by the Drag and Drop method of creative input; simply selecting rather than creating. Cruel dopplegangers of human-conceived characters, these toons.

It’s been a while since I investigated this stuff but I recall that Disney characters used to be wrought by a single animator, leading perhaps a team of underlings but ultimately responsible for a characters’ cadence and motion and range of facial expressions etc. I *could be wrong* but it really FEELS like the WRECK IT RALPH cast came off a production line. I know there’s an argument to be made for this being purposeful and some sort of commentary on/criticism of the videogame medium itself, but if that’s true then the makers of WIR hate videogames and have no business making a movie that takes place in their world. I mean what is this a Haneke picture ? :)

And the action sequences…man, I’m not prepared to justify it, but to me it felt like the experience most people claim to have had when watching the Wachowski’s SPEED RACER.

So there’s some fundamentals of WIR’s aesthetics that I couldn’t come to grips with. Also:

-Sarah Silverman continues her career of blurring the line between a clever meta-satire of an extremely obnoxious person, and an extremely obnoxious person … in the form of a frenetic robot child? I have some serious difference of opinion with people who found this character tolerable let alone cute. Her earnestness is shrilly saccharine and I would have deleted this monster from my videogame in the early design phase.

-The child-predator qualities of King Candy deserve some justification, methinks.

But yeah, bottom line was that it was a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, for me. But I do appreciate the customary depth of your response to my inquiry, and genuinely hope I can reevaluate the film.

Ain’t nobody fucked with that “HERO’S DUTY” segment. I said all there is to say until Vern fucks with this joint. I mean, like, I feel like the conversation ends there, the convo doesn’t even exist, until you find something that fucks with that sequence. The burden of proof is on your bitchass self and whatever Scandinavian bullshit you bringing. But don’t be surprised if Sarah Silverman be shuttin’ your shit down…

Vern, I did notice Wolverine jump into action to help his fallen mutant comrade. I was also thinking that at this point almost every presenter and nominee at the Oscars is or has been (or soon to be) a comic book hero or villain.

Best actress and supporting actress: Mystique & Cat Woman
Best supporting actor: Chudnofsky (Green Hornet villain)
The winner of Best Director has worked with The Hulk and Daredevil directed the winner for best film of the year.
Nominated heroes & villains: Two Face & Wolverine
Presenters/performers: Ironman, Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Bruce Banner/The Hulk, another Cat Woman/Storm, Jor-El (Superman’s dad), Howard Saint (Punisher villain), Electro, Elektra, The Joker, and I am sure there are more I am missing.

Charles: That reminds me of the Oscars from one or two years ago, when I watched the show with my mother and kept telling her “He is Batman, he is the Hulk, he was the Hulk, he is gonna be the Hulk, he is now a superhero too, he is Wolverine, she is in a comic book movie, superhero, superhero, superhero” and so on.

I’m not saying they’re lazily crafted, not at all. Obviously meticulous to the nth degree. I’m saying each character’s face registers a different microexpression every 12 frames or so. Hard for me to really put forth what struck me as so evil (yes, evil) about the way they animated it… it was like I was put into a cannon and fired into the wrong side of the Uncanny Valley. I’ll follow your link and try to fuck wid it when it ain’t bedtime, cheers.